Just before my birthday, my in-laws came to visit me and my husband in England and we went to Stratford-upon-Avon and Leamington Spa. We had plans to visit Oxford, but the rail replacement buses put a stop to that plan, but we had fun nevertheless. Last weekend, my husband and I took a day trip to Liverpool and we mostly browsed vintage and charity shops and bought some good finds. I’ll be sharing stories from my days out in this blog post.
Stratford-upon-Avon
I’ve been to Stratford-upon-Avon quite a few times and it’s a really nice town. You’ll get the most out of it if you’re really into Shakespeare, but even if you’re the type of person to fall asleep in English class, you’ll still love the beautiful town centre. If you’re visiting during the holiday season, you’ve got to check out the Christmas Market. It’s definitely the nicest one in the area so that’s why it’s always packed during that time. The only thing is it’s a bit samey and a lot of the stalls sell the exact same thing and I wish there were more handicrafts and artisan goods, but it’s still a fun experience. There’s also really good Christmas pantos there and they’re a lot of fun.
The first time I visited, I bought some nice 45s and this last time I bought a 45 of The Animals’ “The House of the Rising Sun” and The Gun’s “Race With The Devil”, two songs I very much love. Here are some pictures of the 45s:
My in-laws wanted to do some touristy stuff and they saw this Tudor World place and treated us. It’s not something I’d personally spend my own money on, I’d rather spend the same amount or a little bit more and go to one of the many National Trust sites – I’ve always had a great experience with those. Tudor World is located inside a 16th century building and it depicts what life was like back in Shakespeare’s time. It calls itself a living history museum, but I wouldn’t say it is one because I didn’t see any historical re-enactors in there like you’d see at Colonial Williamsburg or the Black Country Living Museum. There is a walking tour with a re-enactor playing William Shakespeare, but we didn’t do it. Perhaps that would have been more interesting. Granted, the ticket price is much cheaper than those places, but it’s a much smaller museum and to me it felt like walking through a low budget, more tacky Warwick Castle meets Ripley’s Believe it Or Not than an actual museum, but in all fairness this isn’t the time period I’m most interested in. But I guess a lot of actual Tudor things are in a big museum like the V&A or British Museum. You could get through the museum in about 20-30 minutes. There were some tidbits that you’d expect from a Horrible Histories book, but it largely felt like a tourist trap to me. Kids might enjoy it more than grownups. It was nice to take pictures outside of and of course I had to wear my Gunne Sax dress, which got a compliment from a patron!
Besides vinyl, we bought some tea and hot chocolate from a shop called Whittard and it’s really good. The coconut hot chocolate mix is vegan and the tea we got was this rose flavoured black tea. I love the smell. They happened to have a sample of it out and well, we’re sold! The nice thing is they give discounts if you buy one of the sample teas.
Leamington Spa Vinyl Finds
Not much to note here, really nice place to visit, but I did find a couple of records I really wanted for my collection, both in great condition and for a great price. I got The Moody Blues’ To Our Children’s Children’s Children for £5 and Roxy Music’s 1972 debut for £8. The record shop is called Head Records and it’s in the Royal Priors shopping centre. They mostly sell new vinyl, but if you go to the back room you’ll find a good selection of used records.
Liverpool: The Main Event!
My husband and I were humming and hawing over birthday plans and with a big trip next month, we wanted to keep costs low so that ruled out any overnight stays since we’d not only need to get a hotel room, we’d also need to find a sitter for Bowie. I decided to make my 30th birthday Beatles themed so on my birthday itself we played board games and watched A Hard Days Night, which has turned 60 this year – that means I’m half as old as A Hard Day’s Night. Since we’re located pretty centrally in the country, that means we have loads of options for a day trip, especially if we’re willing to go on a couple hours train journey. I love Liverpool and I’ve been there before a few times, first time with just my mum, once with my parents, and another time on my own.
The day we happened to go to Liverpool was 3 August and that happened to be the day of the big riots that have been going on since the mass killing at a Taylor Swift themed dance class in Southport. I had no idea that that was going on and thankfully it didn’t affect our trip too much and I never felt like I was in immediate danger, but the vibes were definitely a bit off in the area and if we’d stayed any longer we might have ended up in danger. I feel really bad for all of the hen parties and birthday parties. More about that later.
Train ride went well and what I really love about Liverpool city centre is that it’s really walkable. Unless you’re planning to go outside the city centre to see some Beatles landmarks, you really don’t need to take a car or go on the bus. If you prefer not to drive or go to landmarks all by yourself and you’d like a guided tour, you could always do the Magical Mystery Tour, however keep in mind they won’t be stopping at every single Beatles landmark so if you’re a completionist, you might want to do a private taxi tour, there’s plenty of those in Liverpool!
For shopping, I went to various shops on Bold Street and that’s where the Cat Cafe happened to be. If you’ve read my older post on visiting Liverpool, I visited five years ago and I had a great time. When I went back then, it wasn’t too busy so I could just walk in, but since we were visiting on a Saturday it was a bit more busy so you’d need a reservation. The person working there said check the website and see if they have an opening and they had a one-hour slot available in an hour so we booked it and came back an hour later. If you’ve got your heart set on a certain time to visit, make sure to book in advance to avoid disappointment! Sure, you can wing it and still have a good time, but planning is really important when you travel.
The Cat Cafe in Liverpool is better priced than the one we had in Coventry (I miss that place a lot!) and has unlimited drinks and some snacks available for purchase. It’s beautiful and looks very classic inside with Victorian looking wallpaper and cute old-fashioned looking portraits of cats on the wall. If you get a latte or a mocha, you’ll get really cute cat themed latte art. I’ll show you some pictures of the cat cafe:
While we were waiting for our Cat Cafe reservation, we checked out some charity shops, vinyl shops, and an independent bookshop run by a co-op. At the first charity shop we visited, they had a 45 playing on the record player next to all of the records they had for sale. As soon as I heard a few seconds of the music I recognised it as Marc Bolan in his Tyrannosaurus Rex psychedelic folk era and I asked the shop assistant if the record was for sale. Turns out it was and the sleeve was right next to the record player. It was just £1! Brilliant!
We checked out a few vintage shops, which I’m afraid to say are very 90s/2000s dominated now. How is that vintage? If I remember it being in style the first time how is it vintage? I’m 30! I’m not that old, right? One shop, Pop Boutique had a selection of vintage 60s and 70s dresses, but nothing that caught my eye. It’s the luck of the draw! And honestly I don’t need any more clothes because my closet is overflowing and I have a lot of clothes sitting in reusable shopping bags. I have a problem!
Above the shop Resurrection there’s a record store called Dig Vinyl, and I’d been there before five years ago and that time I bought a Jam 45 – “All Around The World” with a picture sleeve and a Small Faces 45 – “Itchycoo Park”. This time, I bought two albums: Mariya Takeuchi’s Love Songs from 1980, a city pop classic – this one came with a poster and it’s my first city pop vinyl, and Phil Lynott’s 1980 solo album Solo in Soho. Prices there are pretty good, nice selection.
We also went to a book shop called News From Nowhere and it’d caught my eye because it said it’s a radical and community bookshop and it’s not all talk! It’s been in business for 50 years and it’s run by a non-profit women workers’ co-operative. It reminded me a bit of the James Connolly bookstore in Dublin (who also have been around for decades), but this one had a bit more variety with a music section with CDs from around the world and books of all different topics. You know I had to look through the music section! They had used books for £1 each and since Eoin’s birthday is exactly a week after mine, I decided to buy him that book and a book about Irish mythology, which has a really cool book cover! I’ll show you that one:
After shopping and coffee, we were looking forward to some food and Liverpool has a lot of vegan options. Bold Street has many vegan friendly places with the marquees and signs proudly displaying vegan-friendly, but I wanted to try an exclusively vegan restaurant closer to the docks and the name of the place caught my eye: Woo Tan Scran, located inside an aptly named bar/restaurant called Down the Hatch, since it’s in a basement (for any handicapped folks reading this, it’s unfortunately not wheelchair accessible at the moment). On the way there, we visited the bombed out church and took some photos. A sad reminder of the effects of war.
The food was excellent. My favourite thing were the pancakes, that were vegan style moo shu pancakes made with jackfruit instead of meat. We ordered tapas style so we got an order of mushroom wings for me, seitan wings for Eoin, and we shared a side of mac and cheese served in a cute little cast iron skillet. I wish the wings came with sauce, that’s the only criticism I have, but I’d mix it with the other food and my husband loved the combination of jackfruit and mac and cheese.
Afterwards, we walked around the Royal Albert Dock and made our way to The Beatles statue to take another picture with it. As we were walking towards The Beatles statue, we saw police in riot gear and we were wondering what’s going on. We didn’t know about any protests going on and everything seemed okay around the cruise ship terminal, the museums, and the Beatles statue, but just a couple of blocks away there it was, a massive protest. We saw counterprotestors waving a communist flag and holding up antifa signs and a couple of blocks away, kept apart by the police, were the far right racist protestors. It was pretty easy to tell which side was which.
As soon as I walked by the protest, it wasn’t too violent yet, but I had a bad gut feeling and I knew we needed to walk away so I motioned to Eoin to make our way to Mathew Street and then back towards the train station. We had advance tickets so they were for a certain train at a certain time, but at the train station there was an announcement that anyone with advance tickets can take an earlier train if they’d like to – it’s a sign. We chose not to since there was a cool art nouveau looking building I wanted to take a picture with, but we’d got out just in time, because things started to get nasty later in the night with looting and teenagers setting off fireworks. The brand new Spellow Hub library was set on fire (A GoFundMe has been set up and has raised over £120k for new books)!
And these far right rioters claim to be all about “protecting kids”? I guess they only care about children if they’re white. There were people doing Nazi salutes at the riots and I don’t understand why. The UK was fighting against the Nazis in WWII. And you call yourselves patriotic? These are the people your ancestors fought during WWII. They’d be ashamed of you. Open the schools! Muslims and mosques were being attacked. Hotels where refugees were being housed were attacked – there’s children in there! Young people were looting shops and stealing luxury goods, and most of those fools weren’t wearing masks, self-snitching and caught in 4K. To say that this anger was misdirected is an understatement. I want to see all of these looters and rioters prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. As a free speech absolutist, if you’re saying hateful things – I don’t agree with jailing people for words alone, but if you’re going around and being violent and violating other people’s rights to feel safe, you need to have the book thrown at you, period.
All of this over misinformation and far right propaganda propagated by these disgusting far right tabloids – Fuck The Daily Mail and Fuck The Sun. I thought Liverpool would have been better than this, considering you see anti-Sun stickers that refer to the rag as The Scum everywhere because of the coverage of the Hillsborough disaster – you will see stuff in Liverpool that says “Justice For The 96” or “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.
The suspect in the Southport stabbing, Axel Rudakubana, was not foreign born and not a Muslim. Even if he was Muslim or foreign born, that still doesn’t mean it’s okay to be hateful and racist. People are individuals. Only one person was responsible for the mass murder, and that is Axel Rudakubana. Rwanda is not responsible. Black people are not responsible.
Stop being racist and realise that wealthy capitalists at the top who run far-right rags use racism to divide the multiracial working class and get them bickering and fighting amongst each other so the rich can come in and steal what little the working class has. Just watch this video, it’s a communications undergrad course in two minutes. Divide and conquer. Racism is why we’ll never have socialism. Explain socialist policies to a racist on the far right and they’ll say yeah that all sounds good, but then they’re cutting their noses to spite their face and voting against their interests because they don’t want non-white and mixed people to benefit from socialism. How sad is that? We need to find a way to deradicalise them and get them to channel that energy into changing this country for the greater good. A refugee or an immigrant is not your enemy, we’re all in this together and we’re all being screwed over the same. Let’s direct our anger at the real enemy: capitalists, the 1%. Where were these rioters when the NHS was experiencing all of these budget cuts? Where were these rioters when inflation got really bad? Wake up! Remember that the wealthy are a minority. Those who have to work for a living far outnumber them and if we’d all set aside our differences and fight the real enemy, imagine what could happen.
To end this soapbox, I’ll end with a quote from John Lennon’s imagine: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”
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